Meleager.

  O mother, I am not fain to strive in speech
  Nor set my mouth against thee, who art wise
  Even as they say and full of sacred words. 
  But one thing I know surely, and cleave to this;
  That though I be not subtle of wit as thou
  Nor womanlike to weave sweet words, and melt
  Mutable minds of wise men as with fire,
  I too, doing justly and reverencing the gods,
  Shall not want wit to see what things be right. 
  For whom they love and whom reject, being gods,
  There is no man but seeth, and in good time
  Submits himself, refraining all his heart. 
  And I too as thou sayest have seen great things;
  Seen otherwhere, but chiefly when the sail
  First caught between stretched ropes the roaring west,
  And all our oars smote eastward, and the wind
  First flung round faces of seafaring men
  White splendid snow-flakes of the sundering foam,
  And the first furrow in virginal green sea
  Followed the plunging ploughshare of hewn pine,
  And closed, as when deep sleep subdues man’s breath
  Lips close and heart subsides; and closing, shone
  Sunlike with many a Nereid’s hair, and moved
  Round many a trembling mouth of doubtful gods,
  Risen out of sunless and sonorous gulfs
  Through waning water and into shallow light,
  That watched us; and when flying the dove was snared
  As with men’s hands, but we shot after and sped
  Clear through the irremeable Symplegades;
  And chiefliest when hoar beach and herbless cliff
  Stood out ahead from Colchis, and we heard
  Clefts hoarse with wind, and saw through narrowing reefs
  The lightning of the intolerable wave
  Flash, and the white wet flame of breakers burn
  Far under a kindling south-wind, as a lamp
  Burns and bends all its blowing flame one way;
  Wild heights untravelled of the wind, and vales
  Cloven seaward by their violent streams, and white
  With bitter flowers and bright salt scurf of brine;
  Heard sweep their sharp swift gales, and bowing bird-wise
  Shriek with birds’ voices, and with furious feet
  Tread loose the long skirts of a storm; and saw
  The whole white Euxine clash together and fall
  Full-mouthed, and thunderous from a thousand throats;
  Yet we drew thither and won the fleece and won
  Medea, deadlier than the sea; but there
  Seeing many a wonder and fearful things to men
  I saw not one thing like this one seen here,
  Most fair and fearful, feminine, a god,
  Faultless; whom I that love not, being unlike,
  Fear, and give honour, and choose from all the gods.

  Oeneus.

  Lady, the daughter of Thestius, and thou, son,
  Not ignorant of your strife nor light of wit,
  Scared with vain dreams and fluttering like spent fire,
  I come to judge between you, but a king
  Full of past days and wise from years